Event

The Wine Club - Chile & Argentina CXCLD!!

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Time: 07:00pm - 08:30pm

Type: Class

Location: The Wine Cabinet

Event Free

Once a month we gather together to explore, in a very interactive way, a small slice of the fascinating world of wine.
While there is no charge for this limited seating, we hope that you will enjoy the wines sufficiently to wish to have them in your wine cabinet!
More importantly, we hope that this short experience with very good wine will make you a lifelong wine lover and a loyal patron of The Wine Cabinet!

We begin promptly at 7:00pm.


 

Chile

Chilean wine is wine made in the South American country of Chile. Chile has a long viticultural history for aNew World wine region dating to the 16th century when the Spanish conquistadors brought Vitis vinifera vines with them as they colonized the region. In the mid-19th century, French wine varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Carmenère and Cabernet Franc were introduced.

In the early 1980s, a renaissance began with the introduction of stainless steel fermentation tanks and the use of oak barrels for aging. Wine exportsgrew very quickly as quality wine production increased. The number of wineries has grown from 12 in 1995 to over 70 in 2005. Chile is now the fifth largest exporter of wines in the world, and the ninth largest producer. The climate has been described as midway between that of California and France. The most common grapes are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Carmenère. So far Chile has remained free of phylloxera louse which means that the country's grapevines do not need to be grafted.[1]

 

Argentina

 

The Argentine wine industry is the fifth largest producer of wine in the world.[2] Argentine wine, as with some aspects ofArgentine cuisine, has its roots in Spain. During the Spanish colonization of the Americas, vine cuttings were brought toSantiago del Estero in 1557, and the cultivation of the grape and wine production stretched first to neighboring regions, and then to other parts of the country.

 

Historically, Argentine winemakers were traditionally more interested in quantity than quality with the country consuming 90% of the wine it produces (12 gallons/45 liters a year per capita according to 2006 figures). Until the early 1990s, Argentinaproduced more wine than any other country outside Europe, though the majority of it was considered unexportable.[3]However, the desire to increase exports fueled significant advances in quality. Argentine wines started being exported during the 1990s, and are currently growing in popularity, making it now the largest wine exporter in South America. The devaluation of the Argentine peso in 2002 further fueled the industry as production costs decreased and tourism significantly increased, giving way to a whole new concept of enotourism in Argentina.

 

The most important wine regions of the country are located in the provinces of Mendoza, San Juan and La Rioja. Salta,Catamarca, Río Negro and more recently Southern Buenos Aires are also wine producing regions. The Mendoza provinceproduces more than 60% of the Argentine wine and is the source of an even higher percentage of the total exports. Due to the high altitude and low humidity of the main wine producing regions, Argentinevineyards rarely face the problems of insects, fungi, molds and other grape diseases that affect vineyards in other countries. This allows cultivating with little or no pesticides, enabling even organic wines to be easily produced.[4]